Gallery
A Wavering Reflection
By Carolynne Fitzpatrick
Now
The image before her is not the person Janet Baker really sees. The tall, willowy woman with piercing gray eyes and a splattering of freckles about her nose is not the figure in the Janet sees in the mirror.
Janet sees an overweight “hefty,” her high school “nickname,” one she still uses on herself, even though at 130 pounds and five feet nine inches tall she is anything but.
Janet shakes her head at the figure in the mirror. Her copper colored hair moves gently around her face. She squeezes at her side, where she pulls at a slab of skin at her waist. “No, no, this won’t do.” She pulls the violet colored dress off and hands it to her best friend Lila, who carries five other discarded outfits.
“I told you that wouldn’t look right on you,” Lila says, huffing. “The color was off. I told you, try for green.” She hands Janet a bright green mid-calf dress, with an empire waist.
“No, I don’t want to wear a dress. Just forget the whole thing.” Janet pulls on her baggy jeans and her loose-fitting cotton sweater. “I’m leaving.”
“Janet! Wait!” Lila dumps the armful of clothes onto a chair in the fitting room and follows her friend out of the store, into the shocking bright light of the mall.
“Janet! Wait up!”
Janet scurries across the mall, heading away, away from the kids talking excitedly as they wait in line for Santa, away from the teenagers laughing and joking outside the ice cream parlor, away from the couples enjoying the space of the mall.
Janet thought she could do it this time. She thought she could buy a dress to wear to her office’s Christmas party this year. But standing there in the mirror, looking at herself, the violet dress clashing horribly with her gray eyes and pale skin, the way the dress hugged to close to her body, Janet couldn’t do it.
Even with Lila along, Janet couldn’t face the image in the mirror, the image she saw, of an overweight girl.
Lila tugs her arm. “Janet! Calm down. Sit down. Come on.” She pulls her towards an empty bench outside the ice cream parlor.
The scents of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream swirl towards Janet and she stands still abruptly. “No,” she says like a child. “No, I don’t want to.”
Lila looks at the ice cream parlor in confusion and after a pause, pulls her away. They sit side by side at the fountain in the center of the mall.
“Please, what’s wrong?”
“I changed my mind. I don’t want to wear a dress.”
“But with your tall figure you look so good in a dress, Jan. Besides, don’t you want Kevin to see you in a dress?” Lila’s eyes sparkle.
Janet’s face turns bright red. The thought of Kevin seeing her in dress, with her legs exposed beneath a silky material, makes her embarrassed. “No.”
Lila looks closely at her friend. “Look, I’m sorry about whatever I did or said to make you feel uncomfort-“
“It’s not you, Lila. It’s nothing you said or did, OK? Let’s just drop it. Those clothes were too expensive anyway. I can’t justify spending over a $200 on one dress.”
Lila sighs. “OK, maybe it’s time for a break. Let’s get some lunch then hit the shops after, OK? At least we can find you a nice pants suit that the office hasn’t seen before.”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel like it anymore.”
“Come on, you know the deal. I help you, you help me,” Lila says teasingly. “I’ve got to find a cute skirt for the party too.”
Janet follows Lila into a small sub shop a few stores away. They pick out a table and wait for service, looking over the menus carefully.
“Yes, the BLT. That’s what I’m getting,” Lila says, trying to get her friend to talk, or at least fill up the silence. Janet picks at the plastic sheet coming off the menu. “And a strawberry shake.”
Janet, on the other hand, decides on a garden salad with fat free ranch dressing and a glass of water. She watches Lila in secret jealousy. How can she ordered a shake and greasy bacon and still look like that?
She and Lila haven’t been friends all that long. Both work at a local law firm as paralegals, for two partners who are also best friends. It was only natural that after spending so long together at the office and after hours that they would become good friends – or end up hating each other.
Kevin, Janet’s secret crush, is a junior partner at the law firm, recently divorced, and Janet has had her eye on him since the moment he walked through the French doors into the office of Benjamin and Bradley.
Janet isn’t the only one who finds him attractive. So does Lila, though she would never ever admit it to Janet. Nor would she go after him. When Janet quietly confessed she found him attractive, Lila knew it took her friend all her courage to share her secret with Lila.
Janet was so shy and innocent, almost like a little girl in some ways, even though Lila was sure Janet is at least the same age as her – 25. Where Lila has had many lovers, she is sure Janet would have only one or two, maybe none at all.
And that’s why she let her have Kevin.
Lila notices that Janet is just picking at her food, sipping her water slowly. How can she not be hungry after the morning we just had? Lila drains her strawberry shake and requests an iced tea.
After watching Janet carefully hide a crunchy crouton under a watery piece of lettuce, Lila’s blood runs cold. There was something familiar about the way Janet was eating.
Things begin to click. Lila rarely, if ever, saw her eat anything. The determined but frustrated way she didn’t want to sit down across from the ice cream shop just minutes before. Janet hated seeing herself in the mirror. This morning, as Janet tried on dresses, it was the first time Lila saw her in anything remotely sexy. She was surprised to see a thin girl underneath the shapeless suits and baggy jeans and gigantic, men’s sized tees. Lila normally saw Janet in.
Lila bites her lip. Could it be?
Lila sits down her water glass and watches as Janet carefully eats one piece of lettuce and spreads the rest of the salad greens about her plate. Lila chews her own sandwich slowly, watching the complex act of her friend pretending to eat.
She knows exactly what Janet is doing.
Janet looks up suddenly and catches Lila watching her. She glares at her. Such an angry look from her friend is unpredictable – Janet always seems so friendly and open. Lila never saw her angry or upset. “What? Do you have a problem or something?”
Lila takes the cue and the opportunity to get at the heart of the problem. “No, but I did in high school.”
“Excuse me?”
“In high school I was anorexic. Do you know what that means?” Lila asks her friend gently.
Janet reacts completely out of character. She throws down her fork. “I’m not a freakin’ moron, of course I know what it means. Go to hell, Lila. Do you know what that means?”
Janet stands up, visibly shaking. She stares at Lila and her face grows red. “You don’t know everything.”
She spins around on her heel and walks off. Janet had never acted that way, not ever, in the three years since she had known her.
And Lila is even more convinced that she’s right.
Middle School
Lila struggled with her self-image while growing up. Under the watchful eye of a fitness crazed mother, Lila was forced into fitness routines from the wee age of three throughout elementary school, as her mother obsessed over her losing her baby fat. While she was never obese by any standard, her mother constantly instilled the belief that she was. To get back at her mother, Lila put on weight by sneaking cupcakes and other treats.
She still remembers the day that changed her life.
On her sixth day of seventh grade, Charise Blair, the most popular girl in school, caught Lila eating a package of cupcakes in a bathroom stall. Lila had forgotten to lock it and Charise, presumably looking to use the bathroom, accidentally bumped it open.
Lila will never forget the look of disgust Charise had on her face, as she watched Lila shove a cupcake in her mouth quickly and smear the chocolate from her hands on a roll of toilet paper she used as a napkin. Lila’s face turned red and she slammed the door shut, but it bounced back and hit her in the face. Tears threatened at her eyes, and Charise just started to laugh. Her laughter filled the bathroom, echoing off the mint green walls. Lila started to cry. “Leave me alone,” she whimpered.
Charise left the bathroom, still laughing away, but ran into her friend Joyce in the doorway. With the door propped open so Lila could hear, Charise warned her friend in her catty voice, “Watch out! Shamu’s in there stuffing her face. God, she is so fat.”
Lila huddled down in the stall, locking the door tightly. She threw the cupcake wrapper in the toilet and made herself throw up. She spent the rest of the lunch period in the bathroom, and then ran home, hiding at the local library for the rest of the day.
When she got home, she walked in like nothing had happened. Her stay-at-home mother was sitting at the kitchen table paying bills. She didn’t even look up.
Lila went upstairs and stared at her reflection, which wavered in the glass as she started to cry. She hated the way she looked – her cheeks puffy, her eyes red from crying. Her mother was right, Charise was right: she was fat..
She pulled a notebook from her backpack and drew a picture of a whale on a sheet of paper. She wrote her name on pencil drawing. Then she tucked it into her pocket. Whenever she felt the need to eat, she’d look at that whale and remember Charise’s disgusted look, the embarrassment and the shame she felt throwing up the cupcakes.
That night at dinner, her mother was pleased to see Lila ate just one helping of the baked chicken and rice dish. And she turned down juice, opting for water.
“I’m glad you want to lose all that pudge, honey.”
Her father looked up from the business reports he was reading. “Fudge? We have fudge for dessert?”
From then on, Lila ate very little. For breakfast, she ate an orange or an apple and drank lots of water. During lunch, she did homework, snacking on a couple veggies in a plastic bag. For dinner, she’d find ways to hide her food, eating just enough from her plate to make it look as though she ate most of it.
(It was perfecting this artistic skill that helped Lila realize her friend Janet was in trouble.)
At first, it was tough to fight the hunger pains. Lila was used to giving in easily to her appetite, scarfing down whole boxes of cookies or bags of chips. But whenever her stomach growled for food, or her mouth watered for cookies or cupcakes, she pulled out the picture she drew of the whale. She remembered Charise’s disgusted and catty voice, “Oh my god, she’s so fat.”
Her mother was pleased with her progress when, at Christmas time, Lila had dropped down three sizes.
But in the spring, when Lila was still on her diet, her mother began to get concerned.
“Lila, honey, you’re doing a great job with your diet. Let Mom treat you to an ice cream cone for dessert.”
Lila smelled a trick, but she too thought she had been doing well with her diet, so she gave in. After dinner, her family headed to the local ice cream parlor, but it was closed. So her mother went to a local grocery store and loaded up a basket with cookies and ice cream. “We’ll make our own ice cream sandwiches.”
Back at home, Lila struggled to eat the ice cream sandwich. A year ago, she would have been begging for thirds, but the sugar and creamy substances were foreign to her tastebuds.
Still, her mother was watching her, so she ate all of it, and excused herself quickly.
Once in the bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror, imaging all the fat from the ice cream pulling at her skin, stretching her body fatter and fatter. The thought made her want to throw up. So she turned on the bathroom fan to cover up the sounds and gagged into the toilet.
She went to bed that night with an empty stomach.
That summer, Lila enrolled in a number of activities including an overnight camp, not so much to make friends with people who didn’t know her as Shamu but to get away from the watchful eye of her mother.
While at camp, Lila found more ways to avoid food – most of the meals were disgusting anyway. She dropped a few more pounds during her month-long stay at camp. One of her counselors noticed, but Lila said she was used to eating home-cooked meals.
The counselor had laughed. “I know what you mean.”
For the rest of the summer, Lila survived on veggies and fruit. She kept herself busy. Before long, she wasn’t eating anything but drinking lots of water, and maybe eating an apple.
By the beginning of eighth grade, Lila weighed about 90 pounds, dropping almost 50 from the year before. Some kids in school thought she was a new student. Lila wanted to change her name and come up with a fantastic story about herself, but she couldn’t be a liar too.
Some kids told her they were shocked she lost all the weight that she did. Others invited her to join in activities – people who wouldn’t have given her a second look, or called her Shamu, were now wanting to be her friend. Lila told herself, That’s because thin people have it all.
But everything she thought she worked so hard for came crashing down when, during the first week of October, she fainted in the cafeteria during a dance committee meeting.
Charise and other students looked on as Lila was loaded into an ambulance and headed for the hospital. (This caused some students to think she wanted attention, calling her “crybaby” and “brat.” Those nicknames, although just as hurtful as Shamu, eventually faded away.)
Her father was the first one to see her after the doctor’s examination. “Lila? Talk to me. Please tell me why you aren’t eating.”
Lila stirred in her bed and lifted her heavy eyelids. “I had to lose the weight.” She didn’t recognize the sound of her own voice, which sounded tinny and empty.
Her father’s eyes flashed with anger, then softened as he held his daughter’s hand tighter. He stayed with her until her mother arrived, breathless and running late from a hair appointment. She looked at Lila and gasped. “Honey? Are you OK?”
“That’s a dumb question, Abby,” her father said quietly. He stood up and fiercely whispered, “Of course she’s not alright. Jesus, you made her starve herself, almost to death!”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t make her do anything.”
“Yes you did, you and your constant obsession about her weight.”
“It wasn’t healthy!”
“And this is?!” He gestured to his daughter who stared at both of her parents.
“Please leave me alone. I’m tired.”
Her mother ignored her. “Honey, I don’t know why you told yourself you couldn’t eat. It’s about smart choices –“
Her father cut her off, pushing her gently into the hallway. “Don’t ever talk to our daughter again about food.”
Their arguing continued in the hallway, but Lila rolled over and squeezed her eyes shut. She was a mess, she knew it, but all she wanted to do was sleep.
As the dinner cart rolled around, she woke up to a dark, cool room. The attendant cheerily greeted her, and placed a meal tray on her bed table. As he left the room, her father walked back in.
She carefully lifted the plastic from the meal and looked disgustedly at the baked chicken, steamed carrots and mashed potatoes in front of her. I can’t eat this.
Her father was watching her. “Hi Dad,” she said, hoping to distract herself from having to eat.
“Hi, sweetie.” He sat next to her bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Can I go home?”
He shook his head sadly. “Sorry, you have to stay for a couple nights so the doctors can keep an eye on you, make sure you are getting better. Do you feel like eating right now?”
She eyed the meal in front of her. “No. Would you want to eat this crap?” She asked her father half-jokingly.
He looked at the meal, made a face and said, “No. Tell you what. Tell me what you want and I’ll bring it to you.”
“I bet the rest of the hospital food looks like this.”
“Not here. I’ll get food from somewhere else. How about Piggy’s?” He asked referring to her favorite deli. She used to love all the treats in the old penny candy displays, the sandwiches piled high with hot peppers and mayo, but she hadn’t been there in a year or more. She honestly didn’t know what she wanted to eat. She didn’t want to eat. But her father was watching her expectantly and she couldn’t let him down. So she smiled and said, “Sure, surprise me.”
“OK.” He checked his watch. “Now your mom is coming back here in a couple minutes with your overnight stuff. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Her mother showed up a few minutes later and Lila snapped off the TV. Her mom stowed the duffel bag near her bed. She saw the uneaten tray of food in front of Lila and shook her head.
“How do you think you’ll get better if you don’t eat?”
“Did you see this? It’s inedible. Dad’s making a run to Piggy’s for me,” Lila said as cheerful as she could.
Her mom peered over the tray and frowned. “Shoot, I wish I had known. He could get a sandwich for me too. If that’s what the food looks like here, I don’t want any either,” she joked.
Mother and daughter sat in silence for a few minutes. Then her mother spoke. “Listen, Lila, I want you to know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry I let you think that starving yourself was the answer to your problems. I should have explained that you need to eat healthy in order to stay in shape and lose weight. Please don’t be mad at me.”
Anger rose in Lila. “It’s not your fault, Mom,” she said firmly. “I was getting picked on at school too. I know I was fat. I tried to lose weight. I just got wrapped up in it.”
“Good, so you don’t blame me?” Her mother bit her lip.
Lila knew, as she shook her head, that her mother was more concerned with her own feelings than her daughter’s plight. And while it saddened her, it made her more determined than ever to get healthy once again and prove to her father – and herself – that she was no longer a victim to what other people thought of her.
So she spent time with a therapist who helped to learn to eat again, making smart, healthy choices, but sneaking in a treat now and then – like a strawberry shake.
She knew she was on her own.
Now
Janet has called in sick to work three days in a row. Enough is enough.
After knocking on the front door of Janet’s modest townhouse a few miles outside of town, Lila peers through the window on the side of the house and sees Janet making her way slowly to the door. When she opens it and sees Lila, she turns red. “I’m sorry about ditching you with the bill last weekend. How much do I owe you?”
“Can I come in?” Lila asks quietly.
Janet opens the door for her friend and walks to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. “Janet, come here. Please. I need to talk to you.”
“Look, I meant what I said. I’m OK. Just leave it be.”
Lila clears her throat. “No, you’re not OK. I may not know everything but I know about anorexia. Jan, I suffered from it in middle school. It almost killed me.”
Janet places the empty coffee pot on the side table and finally sits next to her friend on the couch. “I’ve always been like this, trying to lose weight. I just never can.”
Lila takes one look at her friend, then pulls out two photos and a yellowed piece of paper out of her purse. She still carries the whale picture, not as a reminder not to eat, but a reminder of where she came from, what she had to go through.
“Look. This is me in seventh grade. And this is me in eighth grade. I lost 50 pounds. I was starving myself. Part of me believed it was what I wanted, to lose all that weight, but another part of me let me believe my mother and the people around me, that I wasn’t good enough.”
“My mother never treated me like that. In fact, my parents never knew about this. I’m good at hiding it.” Janet said with a sad smile.
“How long have you been on a diet?”
“Most of my life. But I do eat!”
“How much did you weigh?”
“Lila, that’s personal! I don’t want to tell you.”
“OK. How much did you want to lose?”
“All of it.” Janet clears her throat. “But I do eat! You saw me at the deli.”
“I saw you carefully spread your food around your plate, hide it in your napkin and chew maybe one piece of lettuce.”
Janet looks down at the floor. “How did you know?”
“Takes one to know one,” Lila says with a gentle laugh. “I perfected the art of making it look like you’re eating when you’re not.” She puts the two photos away. “Why do you think you’re fat?”
“Look at me! I am!” Janet cries, two tears rolling down her cheeks.
“I am looking at you. You’re not fat. But you are making yourself sick.”
Janet is quiet for a few minutes. “You really were anorexic?”
“Yes.”
“How did it start for you?”
Lila tells her story. “But I was able to overcome it. I understand that maybe you don’t want to be overweight, but every body is different. You have to do what’s right for you. And, sorry, but starving yourself isn’t the answer.”
“But I don’t know how to stop,” Janet whispers.
Lila reaches over to hug her friend. “Baby steps. That’s all it is. Just get comfortable eating one thing at a time. And you should probably see a therapist.”
“I’m not crazy,” Janet pulls out of her friend’s hug defensively.
“No, you’re not. But a therapist can talk to you about this problem you have, where you look in the mirror and see someone you’re not.”
“I just don’t want to be fat.”
“Even if you were – which you’re not – it’s OK. You need to learn to love yourself.”
“When did you get all greeting card mushy?” Jan says sarcastically. Instantly her eyes reveal her apology.
“Look, Jan, I can understand wanting to be healthy. I went through the same thing. But you gotta learn that weight isn’t everything.”
“I don’t even know if I like the taste of food anymore.”
Lila thought back to the ice cream sandwiches her mother made that one evening as a treat. “I know what you mean. That’s why you need to take baby steps.”
Janet is silent for a few minutes. She looks at her friend with watery eyes. “But I don’t know where to start.”
“Right here, right now. Go take a shower and we’ll go to lunch, get a sandwich or something. Then I’ll drive you by my therapist’s office. It’s easy to get to.”
“You still see a therapist?”
“Yeah. She keeps me on track.”
Janet nods. “OK.” She smiles. “OK. I will. I’ll be just a few minutes,” Janet says, heading for the stairs. She pauses to turn around. “Thanks Lila. I mean that. Thanks.”
“Sure. Take your time, OK?”
It might be some time before Janet can look in the mirror and love how she looks. But she will. It’s a tough road ahead of her and Lila knows it well.
Lila calls the office from her cell phone. “I won’t be coming in after lunch,” she tells the receptionist. “I’ll be in tomorrow. And Janet will be back too.” |
